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Fashion Club
The Fashion Club is a Lawndale High school club, a self-appointed 'upper class' concerned with the promotion of "looking good," both through example and the critique of others. They have extremely high physical and social standards for admission: there are strict requirements for weight and fingertip length, and Brooke had to have extensive plastic surgery to get the point of possibly getting membership. The only members are: *Sandi Griffin: president *Quinn Morgendorffer: vice-president *Stacy Rowe: secretary *Tiffany Blum-Deckler: treasurer From their website, the mission statement: To lead the Lawndale High School populace in all matters of attire, personal adornment, and garmentual self-enhancement. To support fellow students in achieving their appearance goals, even the hopeless ones with greasy bangs and rough, dry elbows. To spot trends, reflect upon them, and critique without malice or favor (like why are all those girls with thick calves jumping on the Capri pants bandwagon?). To maintain standards of dress in school hallways and classrooms using the time-honored tools of philosophical enlightenment: logic, gentle persuasion, and vicious, relentless ridicule. Overview - Daria and Jane, "The Old and the Beautiful" The club is generally assumed to be one of the most powerful cliques at Lawndale High. The members are presented as being highly popular and at all the right parties. In early episodes like "Malled", they could get boys to drive them anywhere they wanted just on the promise of getting to hang out with them; they abused this by making the boys stay in the car during their shopping trips, and eventually boys stopped giving them rides ("Legends of the Mall"). While the Fashion Club are an official school-sanctioned club - they are referred to during a school assembly in "The Old and the Beautiful" - they seem to lack a faculty adviser or any sort of oversight. They have an internal charter and by-laws, which is quite byzantine - "Antisocial Climbers" implies Sandi is making up the by-laws but it's the only episode to do so. "Depth Takes a Holiday" has a report from the Accessory Committee. Since there's only four girls in the club, it's possible that Tiffany is the entire committee. Sandi Griffin has stated she founded the club. It's made clear throughout the show that they're very bad academically. In Quinn's case, this turns out to be because she's bright but is deliberately not trying hard enough. She knows she's smarter than the others and expects to get higher marks (but doesn't let on about this), and was worried when she didn't get a much higher score on the P-STATs in "Is It Fall Yet?". We don't know for sure if Sandi is dumb or just lazy, but we do know that Tiffany and Stacy just aren't that bright - "Is It Fall Yet?" has Stacy noted as trying to learn and not doing well. Stacy does do better on P-STAT scores than both Sandi and Tiffany though. While Sandi expresses contempt for the idea of academic learning, she still pretends she got higher marks than she did so she didn't seem dumber than the rest of the group. The Fashion Club was officially disbanded at the end of the Daria series, with all four members deciding to take extended sabbaticals. However, the four immediately started making plans with each other to fill their newly freed time. The Club's place in the Lawndale High social order The Fashion Club appear to be at the top of the Lawndale High social order: at noted, boys used to do anything for them, Brooke was desperate to join, they got into the right parties, and they have a strong following of boys (up to and including a bloody punk) in "The Story of D". The Fashion Club definitely views itself as highly popular, and Quinn certainly is. However, Brooke was the only girl we saw who wanted to join, the boys did stop giving them rides after a while, and most of the boys shown were interested solely in Quinn (to Sandi's annoyance), with Stacy being blown off by her only known date. The club only had three members before Quinn joined. Evan, a popular kid and member of the track team, had publicly dismissed the Club ("See Jane Run"). Notably, Tiffany once stated "Everyone likes us because we tell them what's wrong with their outfits", a remark that heavily implies the opposite (on the writer's part). The "Selective Soulmate" website (see web presence) implies Sandi has to date people who don't live in Lawndale by the time of Season 5, as she's developed a reputation for paranoia and viciousness. Admission Policies Admission to the Fashion Club appears to be a lofty ambition of many girls at Lawndale High. During the series, we never see any admissions besides Quinn, who is admitted, as Vice-President, on her first day at school. Brooke is strung along with implied promises of admission, but these presumably false promises fall apart when something goes, badly, wrong with Brooke's looks. We do hear admission policies being discussed in the episode "Fat Like Me" - and later, the group fails to find any girls at school that meet them all. The Club and Daria Daria and the Fashion Club as an entity had very few interactions; while Daria was aware of and contemptuous of them, she tried to avoid them and they tried to avoid her. Exceptions to this included several deliberate attempts to start a conversation in "Too Cute", "The Misery Chick" and "Quinn the Brain" or unsuccessful makeover attempts in "Malled" and "I Loathe a Parade", (to show the public what good work they do); and "Fat Like Me", where Daria covertly helps the Fashion Club survive in order to win a bet with Jane (neither cared beyond that). The Fashion Club didn't think much of Daria, but as "Quinn the Brain" shows, the girl unnerved them: an attempt to talk to Daria went tits-up because none of the three had the guts to talk to her. Web presence The two original MTV Daria websites gave the Fashion Club their own website and online presence, the first in 1999 and the second in 2001. That Lawndale Look, in 1999, ran monthly articles by the members ("Internet Shopping vs. Real Shopping"), a guide to the members, an application form ("automated rejection feature"), a Flaw Finder by Tiffany, quotes and wallpaper, and a copy of the Mission Statement. Selective Soulmate In 2001/02, they'd created Selective Soulmate, an online dating site for popular people. Features included: Online Etiquette ("Quinn is full of useful advice in her usual know-it-all way"); Safety Tips ("Tiffany tells us how to protect ourselves in an online world full of weirdo freaks and sorry geeks"); and Success Story ("Stacy profiles a couple who met online and are still in that show-offy stage. It’s kind of sickening, actually.") External Links That Lawndale Look Selective Soulmate Category:Groups